The Full Story
Increasing Upsell and Retention through data signals
Thomson Reuters is a global leader in media, legal, and tax technology, undergoing a digital transformation.
My team leads the Product Growth motion in the proprietary e-commerce platform, focusing on renewals and upsells.
THE PROBLEM
We send personalized (AI-driven) upsell and renewal plans to customers when it’s time to renew their subscription to one or more of TR's software products.
My job was to increase renewal and upsell conversion through purely product-led as well as product+sales contracts.
My contributions
1
I analyzed product usage data to identify patterns leading to an upsell by conducting a regression analysis of upsell and churn, along with ~30 user interviews. Based on these insights, I formulated a hypothesis to identify signals indicating potential upsell candidates.
2
We designed a series of experiments consisting of sequential steps to guide hand-raisers toward an upsell.
E.g: we put in nudges (notifications, language changes, pop-ups) at certain times points when a customer was reaching usage limits on a feature + logging in with a certain frequency + checking plan details.
3
We saw a significant increase in upsell conversion within the test group and confirmed our hypothesis around signs of hand-raisers. We then fed this information to the pricing personalization algorithm to improve our timing and conditions of the upsell plans for hand-raisers.
BUT THEN WE RAN INTO A PROBLEM.
The nudging elements we introduced (notifications, pop-ups) to drive renewals and upsells disrupted the in-app user experience (see example in the screenshot). A user research study showed that customers found these elements annoying, creating a conflict of interest between the Growth and Core Product teams.
​
To address this, we decided to research and analyze the behavior of customers who make purchasing decisions. I led two company-wide discovery sprints, each lasting two days and consisting of 10 group exercises.
​
I engaged all key stakeholders in mapping out the journey of purchasing users.
As a result, we decided to transition the entire growth engine to the e-commerce platform and leverage it as the foundation for all product-led growth motions. You can read about the progress of this work here.
Results
Increased the adoption of Digital+Sales contracts by 10% YoY
Established the discipline of looking for data signals
Increased upsell conversion by 7%